Creepshots and revenge porn: how paparazzi culture affects women

Really worth reading the entire thing.

The parts about the pressure on schoolgirls, the testimony from young celebrities, the websites set up specifically to disseminate pictures which were not intended to be shared and are in fact often stolen by hackers... this really should open some eyes to what's really going on here.

Laws has been researching possible legal routes for victims of such sites, which has brought her into contact with Mary Anne Franks, associate professor of law at the University of Miami. "What unites creepshots, the Middleton photographs, the revenge porn websites," says Franks, "is that they all feature the same fetishisation of non-consensual sexual activity with women who either you don't have any access to, or have been denied future access to. And it's really this product of rage and entitlement."

Franks finds it interesting that the response to these situations is so often to blame the woman involved. Ali Sargent, a 19-year-old student and activist, says in her school years there were a few incidents of girls being filmed in sexual situations, without their knowledge or consent, and the attitude of other girls was dismissive at best – displaying that dearth of sympathy that distances people from the thought that it could ever happen to them. "It was mostly just, 'well, she was pretty stupid,'" says Sargent.

Franks echoes this. She says the argument goes: "'You shouldn't have given those pictures to that person', or 'You shouldn't have been sunbathing in a private residence', or 'You should never, as a woman, take off your clothes in any context where anybody could possibly ever have a camera'. That's been shocking to me, that people aren't just outraged and furious about this, but they're actually making excuses for this behaviour, and blaming women for ever being sexual any time, at all.

"Even in a completely private setting, within a marriage – it couldn't be any more innocuous than the Middleton situation – and yet people are still saying things like: what was she expecting, she's famous and she's got breasts, and therefore she's got to keep them covered up all the time. I do think it's a rage against women being sexual on their own terms. We're perfectly fine with women being sexual, as long as they are objects and they're passive, and we can turn them on, turn them off, download them, delete them, whatever it is. But as soon as it's women who want to have any kind of exclusionary rights about their intimacy, we hate that. We say, 'No, we're going to make a whore out of you'."

1. Good read. Thank you for posting. nt

2. Wow, one of the best articles I've read in a long, long time redqueen. So, so much info here

Its hard to pick out just 4 paragraphs to highlight. Just great stuff. I know this will drop like a stone here but I'll kick it again in the am - Sunday nights are pretty slow on DU.

More from the article:

"In recent years a genre of websites dedicated to sharing humiliating pictures of women – and occasionally men – has cropped up, known as "revenge porn" sites. The idea is that vengeful people can post humiliating, sexual pictures of former partners, photos often clearly intended for personal use only, if they were taken with consent at all.

Charlotte Laws first encountered these sites in January this year, after her daughter Kayla, who is in her mid-20s, had her computer hacked. In Kayla's email account was one topless photo she had taken of herself – it hadn't been shared with anyone – which was then posted on a notorious revenge porn site, Is Anyone Up. She was distraught, and Charlotte, an author and former private investigator, spent 11 days, non-stop, working to get the picture taken down. One of the nastiest aspects of the site, which has since closed, was that humiliating photographs would be posted alongside details of the person's social media accounts, so they were immediately identifiable.

Laws wanted to find out more about the experiences of those whose images ended up on the site, so began an informal study. She called 40 people – a few men, but mainly women, reflecting the site's make-up – and says that 40% had had accounts hacked, while others were victims of vengeful exes. She spoke to three teachers, one of whom had lost her job due to the site, and another whose job hung in the balance. One woman was terrified the photos would be used against her in a custody battle. Another had seen her business ruined – even though the nude images the site ran alongside her social media profiles weren't actually of her. There was a woman who had taken pictures for her doctor, of her breasts bandaged after surgery, and those had been hacked from her computer and posted. All the pictures were open to biting discussion of looks and desirability."

Post surgical photos?? Naked pictures of a person that isn't really them and now they're in jeopardy of losing their jobs??!!

9. And what of the women whose images are shared on creepshots?

10. Not when the photographing is done like this:

That's stalking and harassment.

They shout awful things at the people they harass. They climb on and stand in front of cars, then if they bumped while the driver is trying to move, they go crying looking for a payout. They block sidewalks and roads.

20. I do think the photographer WAS stalking Kate Middleton.

The distance involved were such that he had to be using an extreme telephoto lens to get the shot. The distance was approximately half a mile away. This wasn't like any passerby could see her topless, so now he did not "simply took a photograph of something that was visible from a public street."

21. You got it.

Using a telephoto lenses to photograph someone from far away when they are on private property that has a reasonable expectation of privacy (as opposed to someone sitting on their lawn 5 feet from a busy street) is not reasonable.

22. I don’t understand how that is not illegal. It looks like imprisonment to me.

Those celebrities are completely under siege: unable to move, unable to leave a place they wish to leave, and unable to go to a place they wish to go to.

I know that the blame for Diana’s death has been placed entirely on the drunk, speeding driver, but he would not have been speeding that way if the paparazzi had not been chasing her and if they had not made her life a living hell for years by hounding her so relentlessly. You’d like to think her death would have cooled things a bit, but obviously it didn’t.

Every now and then I will make a quick run in daylight from the bathroom to grab something I forgot to take in with me when I went in for my bath. (never at night, of course—that would be like being on stage and under a spotlight!)

If someone standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment had a telephoto lens, that person could catch a clear shot of me in my altogether. Of course, no one would want to, but the idea that any woman has to assume that she is under really creepy levels of surveillance at all times and therefore must never, never, never have a single unguarded moment like that, because if she does it’s her own damned fault, really disgusts me.

12. You couldn't have possibly read the article to have made this statement

"Paparazzi culture has been a problem for decades, but it has taken on an especially sinister, sexualised hue in recent years. In 2008, for instance, a photo agency announced that Britney Spears definitely wasn't pregnant – by posting pictures of her in period-stained knickers. Emma Watson has said that on her 18th birthday she realised that "overnight I'd become fair game ... One photographer lay down on the floor to get a shot up my skirt. The night it was legal for them to do it, they did it. I woke up the next day and felt completely violated." At the Leveson inquiry, towards the end of 2011, Sienna Miller said that for years she was "relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily ... spat at, verbally abused ... I would often find myself, at the age of 21, at midnight, running down a dark street on my own with 10 men chasing me"."

16. creepshots isn't upskirt shots.

51. This one's been defending the photographer in other threads as well

I think you're having a conversation with a brick wall since pretty much all the facts pointing to the stalkers' photographer being 100% Not Acceptable and Entirely The Photographer's Fault are just getting rejected by the assumption that the victim was up against the sidewalk or something.

32. Kate Middleton was not "in vuew of a public street"

That is 100% not what happened in that case.

She was in a private home in an enclosed outdoor area, and the photographer climbed into foliage and photographed her from over a half mile away. In addition, what the Irish photographer did was against French law.

His photos were the result of an illegal act.

You make it sound like Kate Middleton was lounging topless in the front yard next to a busy street. Even well-known people have a legal expectation to a reasonable amount of privacy when not in the public.

37. He could not have taken her photo with a regular camera. To get those shots in a private

setting requires taking the trouble and spending the money on special equipment. That equipment should be regulated.

If your neighbor did the same thing he would be arrested for harassment.

Is it okay to set up a camera in someone's bathroom, or in a public bathroom or women's dressing room in a store eg? I think that is considered to be a crime. There is really no difference in using a zoom lens to overcome someone's attempt to remain private. It is taking extraordinary steps to invade someone's right to privacy on private property.

50. Digital "zoom" on a phone camera isn't exactly a telescope. (nt)

58. If you are on private property, even a back yard, and a neighbor sneaks around taking

photos of you, you can call the police and file charges against them. This is stalking.

It doesn't matter what tools you have, it never did. Just because eg, telescopes were available for a long time, doesn't mean you can spy on your neighbors from a distance. I believe there are laws against that in fact.

New technology doesn't eliminate the right to privacy unless we allow it. Abuse of technology, which is what this is, is not the same as having a right to spy on people on private property.

I am sure he always has bodyguards within earshot, so were they really alone? If not, I have no sympathy for her. Jackie Onassis was photographed years and years ago, this is nothing new. People in the public eye should be a bit smarter. I don't go outside my house half dressed and I live on 40 acres with no neighbors, but you never know if the UPS man or her bodyguards would be around.

23. Did you catch the NON-consensual part?

Women should not have to go around covered from head to toe because of these assholes.
The assholes taking non-consensual photos need to be humiliated themselves and stopped by public knowing this picture taker degrades others..If you see a jerk taking pics of crotches boobs or creep shots,If anyone sees it, make some noise, tell everyone in earshot what the POS is doing point him out so everyone knows what's going on and who it is..

Blame Goes to the PHOTOGRAPHER or Vengeful EX. Don't say the woman has to watch out for herself,she had no choice,Blame the person who CHOSE to hack for pictures or CHOSE to use a photograph to harm an Ex.

THIS is NON-Consenting. Non-Consenting means A perpetrator crime of CHOICE was done against the will or permission of another person..

The person to blame is not the victim.Shame the ASSHOLE perpetrators ALWAYS.

29. Kiddie porn is rape porn

A 10 year old can't give consent. I'm not going to go so far as to directly compare rape to this, other than to say that consent isn't involved in either. But it should be widely condemned at least, if not banned in the most egregious cases.

33. Morning kick! nt

34. Disturbing.

The story prompts questions about why there is such a market, and therefore audience, for these pictures. As others have pointed out, it is not as though there is any dearth of bare breasts, consensually exposed and shared, on the internet. The answer involves a familiar combination of desire and humiliation. There is an interest in seeing not just any breasts, but all breasts, a sense that female bodies are public property, fair game – to be claimed, admired and mocked

The War on Women is not limited to taking away a woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. The War On Women is also an attempt to take away a woman’s right to choose what her role in the world will be. It is evident from the Pledge Modesty Matters encourages women to sign, that controlling what women wear is but the opening gambit in the eventual “taming of the shrew,” until it will again be a woman’s duty to defer to her husband, - and even worse than that, to obey “religious” men who claim to speak for God.

The Handmaid's Tale is the future these types want for us. I am so glad I am not a young woman in today's culture. I don't know how they deal with it.

42. It is much worse now.

Emma Watson has said that on her 18th birthday she realised that "overnight I'd become fair game ... One photographer lay down on the floor to get a shot up my skirt. The night it was legal for them to do it, they did it . I woke up the next day and felt completely violated."At the Leveson inquiry, towards the end of 2011, Sienna Miller said that for years she was "relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily ...spat at, verbally abused ... I would often find myself, at the age of 21,at midnight, running down a dark street on my own with 10 men chasing me".

61. Totally agree with you there

I don't understand those who get a "thrill" out of looking at pics of people who never consented to having these pics made and/or made public.

For some, it's merely, "Well, it's there already, so no harm in gaping at Middleton's breasts. Who cares if SHE'S hurt by it? It's all about MY entertainment and amusement! Cuz I'm a special snowflake!"

Makes me sick, really. I could say more about a personal experience with this type of "shaming" but I'll just say that people who make or consume images of those who did not consent are CREEPY, VILE, SELFISH and CRIMINAL.

62. It's about consent (and violation of it), power to humiliate, etc...

I've read about the sleazy owner of a site enjoying massive popularity whom I won't mention or link to; making money hand-over-fist hosting candid nude photos that butthurt ex-boyfriends took of their former girlfriends (who are of course named and shamed on the site)...

The site owner is laughing even in the face of more cease-and-desist orders than he can count...

64. Oh I quite agree. billions really, trillions.

I remember some guy back in the 90s commenting on the fact that the internet is and always has been a fountain of smut.

And you have to be a bit of a fool to pay for dirty pictures today, you are quite right, but today most of the money in porn is in "specialized" stuff anyway. Back before the 60s you could make money with ordinary naked people, didn't even have to act like they were screwing, not nowadays.

I am always a bit stunned to turn on HBO at 2:00 in the afternoon on Sunday and see a couple movie stars pretending to go at it hot and heavy, and if you are not at least twice as dirty as HBO in the afternoon, you are not going to make a buck with it on the web. I cannot off hand think of anything (including a lot of things I'd just as soon have missed) I have not seen at one time or another while fooling around on the web or in the course of my job (when I was still working).

The only real difference between the daytime smut on TV and the late night stuff is in the daytime the acting is better.

55. Recommend. Until we can change perverted, religion based general institutionalized societal

attitudes about women, sex, and human bodies, this type of perverted weirdness will perpetuate.

"OOOO OOOO, Mr. Slate, Mr. Slate! This is Fred! Hold the presses, you ain't gonna believe this! I got a clear shot of the the Queen's tits! This is gonna be HUGE!1!!1 (laughs like a brain damaged chimpanzee - hoo hoo hoo!!11!1)

How incredibly juvenile and idiotic is that? Grow the fuck up, for godsake.

IMO, this passage in the book of Genesis is the primary dogmatic basis of western patriarchal religion perpetuated sexism, misogyny, and possibly many sexual fetishisms in, (such as idiotic, immature, silly human beings sneaking around taking pictures of unsuspecting women's bodies:

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Somehow, these women, and this culture, like so many others like them, did not get the news about how they were now inherently and intrinsically ashamed of their naked bodies.

Sorry. There's no way I can take all this patriarchy affirming, misogynistic text literally, and the perpetuation of literal interpretations of historical allegories into religious dogmas by authoritarian control freaks is holding back human evolution.

Until we can, as a significant body of individuals, and subsequently, collectively as a society, sufficiently emancipate ourselves from this, and other types of institutionalized mental slavery, these juvenile attitudes toward sex, women, LGBT's, and human bodies, will not change significantly, and will continue to irreparably, permanently harm so many children, in so many ways.

“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”
― Frank Zappa

63. It is about entitlement...and about marking turf

The male of the species is naturally predatory and genetically predisposed to territorial behavior. All males across all species have varying degrees of these traits, and they go hand in hand. Predatory males mark territory to discourage other predatory males.

Males, no matter how much we try, do not see women as equals. Across most species, females are physically weaker and lack certain natural fighting mechanisms, such as horns. Just a look at the male and female Hercules beetles makes it clear which is the predatory fighter. Males do not even regard all other males as equals: there is a hierarchy for males based on physical strength or social/economic power as well as sexual orientation. And yes, most straight guys feel they are superior to gay gays, white guys to black guys (a condition artificially maintained by the state; if lawlessness were to ensue, white guys would be toast.)

Women, like everything else that isn't a worthy opponent, are part of the territory. That is how guys think at their root, even if they don't admit it. Males feel entitled to all the territory they can hold and defend, and by any means necessary. Men who follow laws--and a legal system is just a way to formalize and stabilize territorial claims--learn how to play within those laws to increase their territory. The laws, however, only favor certain males and relatively few. Other males must take out their entitled feelings and predatory nature in other ways, some extra-legal, some just shady, but all involve a way of taking territory from those who have.

This is where Kate Middleton comes in. Without the royal family, she is of little interest even physically. The author of the article is correct in stating that it is Kate's very distance, unapproachability, and impossibility that makes her tantalizing to a predatory male. In war, the more powerful foe you defeat, the admirable the victory. The more well guarded a piece of property is, the more admired a man is for getting access to it. And this is where I disagree with the author of the article: this isn't about women being sexual or women's bodies or feminism. Quite frankly, most men don't take any of that seriously and don't think about it. Kate Middleton is not really a person, she is extremely well guarded property by the premier Alpha Male in Britain. For the photographer, it wasn't about sexual desire for Middleton or about hurting Middleton personally. It was about bragging rights (and the resultant payday) for getting access, by whatever means necessary, to extremely well guarded property. Of course, it is tinged with sexuality and sexual domination--testosterone controls both sex and aggression in males. But it's territorial conquest at its root. The photographer marked Middleton as turf.

Of course, when you look at Kate Middleton--or any young woman in this situation--as a person, what was done was an extraordinary violation of her person. What is especially poignant here is that Kate was "playing by the rules," so to speak. She was not flashing people in a night club--she was in an extremely secluded, well guarded, private estate, and was sunbathing in France, a country where topless bathing has been totally normal for many decades. So, because Kate Middleton was following the rules, it must have been the photographer who was breaking the rules to get what he wanted. But of course, the photographer's argument was that he was in a "public street" and broke no laws. Advanced technology allowed him to invade and conquer without having to take the risk of illegality or risk to his own person. (I imagine that wild animals felt the same sense of unfairness when men invented the gun, a technology that allowed killing from a distance without the need to engage the animal itself.)

So if the photographer was not breaking the law (set up to protect territory), then the public, eager for someone to blame, HAS to blame Middleton. The powerful feeling that a wrong has been committed HAS to go somewhere. Saying that everyone was following the rules and everyone is, therefore, blameless, is not a satisfying answer. People feel there is something clearly wrong with the wife of a future king having topless photos out there. In order to blame Kate Middleton--and there really isn't any logical way to blame her--that have to go to the illogical conclusion that Middleton should live her entire life as if the paparazzi were in the room with her. Perhaps Middleton should never shower when visiting friends because some photographer with a tricked up lens and safe spot to stand could photograph her while she was soaping up. This is insanity, of course, but it comes from a mentality that if a predatory male is playing by the rules, he cannot be held accountable for the very act of being predatory. It's an unconscious acknowledgement by women and men that there is nothing that can be done about male aggression, territorialism, and marking behavior. The only strategy left open for women is avoidance, and this is damned near impossible in a world where technology makes privacy a complete joke. Avoidance depends on privacy as an option. In our present world, unfortunately, privacy isn't an option any more.

So what is to be done?

One could certainly have a go at changing the rules. Limit the size and scope of camera lenses, write laws making it illegal to get within a certain large distance of celebrities, etc. These small changes would be ultimately rather silly band aids: first, they would only address celebrities and not real women and two, the paparazzi would quickly figure out a way to get around them.

The only solution seems to be a great societal change in attitude. But which attitude? Should we all learn to see predatory photographs as not that big a deal? I don't know that this is even possible. First, the very real violation women feel and the very real humiliation they undergo argue strongly against a blase attitude being possible. Add to that the fact that males will always admire predatory activities of other males (provided they are not directed at oneself), especially those that feed a sense of entitlement. I believe these impulses are biological in nature, not social, and don't see them ending anytime soon.

Perhaps we need an advance in protective technology. The future iPhone6 could come with a visual scrambler app which, when set to "on", could jam the signals of a phone or digital camera within a certain radius. The Defense Department already has such technology, as many demonstrators know. Perhaps it's time to make a consumer product out of the thing. It might not help Middleton (it would be too far away) but it could help the rest of us.